Developers building projects along or near the Underline could be allowed to go bigger if they contribute funds for the city of Miami’s portion of the planned 10-mile long linear park.

Under a proposal crafted by the clty’s planning and zoning department, projects within a half-mile radius of Metrorail stations could get an increase in height from eight to 12 stories, as well as a floor lot ratio bonus increase from 25 percent to 35 percent in exchange for improvements and maintenance to the Underline, which will run underneath Metrorail’s elevated tracks from the Dadeland South Station to the Brickell Station. Developers could also opt to pay contributions into a public benefits fund set up by the city.

Renderings of the Underline linear park and trail in Miami-Dade County

“The objective is to incentivize sustainable development that embraces the 10-mile Underline,” said Melissa Tapanes, an attorney representing Friends of The Underline.

Donations would be based on a percentage of the market value of the per-square-foot price charged for units in projects near and along the Underline. In addition, the contributions would only apply to the five miles of the linear park that fall within city of Miami limits. Developers could also score a 20 percent parking reduction for their projects if they place bicycle racks in their development sites along the Underline.

At a recent meeting of the Miami Planning, Zoning and Appeals Board, Aaron Stolear of 13th Floor Investments said his employer strongly supports the legislation.

“We think it will enhance the Underline and make the vision happen,” Stolear said.

The board unanimously recommended approval, but the city commission will make the final decision.

Last year, 13th Floor and The Adler Group won a Miami-Dade County bid to develop Link at Douglas Station, a mixed-use development that will include 970 residences, a 150-key hotel and 70,000 square feet of retail space and a public plaza. The seven-acre project will connect to the Metrorail Douglas Road Station at 3060 Southwest 37th Court. As part of the deal, 13th Floor and Adler will make a $600,000 contribution to The Underline.

In a recent email, 13th Floor Managing Principal Arnaud Karsenti said the new legislation would not directly benefit Link at Douglas Station because the project is already receiving zoning bonuses and benefits from the county that exceed what is proposed by the city.

“However, we definitely believe that this will have a beneficial impact on all neighboring properties,” Karsenti said, “It will stimulate better urban development along the entire US-1/Metrorail corridor.”

In September of last year, Miami city commissioners approved $50 million in funding for the $120 million linear park. The money would come from development fees charged by the city. About $67 million will be raised through private donations and other public funding.

 

Source: The Real Deal

One of the key measures on Miami Beach’s upcoming ballot is item #82, which would allow North Beach to move forward on the key facet of a master plan for revitalizing a 10-block district along 71st Street between Collins Avenue and Indian Creek Drive.

If approved by the majority of Miami Beach voters, the initiative would adopt an ordinance increasing FAR (floor area ratio) in the town center zoning districts to 3.5, which would pave the way for a more walkable and dense neighborhood with new public spaces, housing, dining and retail. Mid-rise buildings would be approved up to 125 feet tall, roughly doubling the total building density.

Over 1,000 NoBe residents played a role in guiding the master planning process, which came to fruition with a design by urban planning and design firm Dover, Kohl, & Partners. Check out their 189-page blueprint here.

Among the community leaders supporting the measure are Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine, Miami Beach Commissioner Ricky Arriola, former Miami Beach Commissioner Nancy Liebman, and Miami Design Preservation League Executive Director Daniel Ciraldo.

Early voting begins November 2 and Election Day is November 7.

Check out the potential transformation with the before and after images below:

71st Street

72nd Street parking lot

 Normandy Fountain

 

Source: Curbed Miami

Insurance coverage is top of mind for Florida’s commercial property owners following the damage left from Hurricane Irma.

Building owners had rushed to review their policies to determine whether they had adequate insurance coverage in place in preparation for the storm.

GlobeSt.com caught up with Tom Kersting, president of the insurance services division of Franklin Street, and Nancy Sheinberg, vice president of insurance services, to discuss how insurance providers are helping property owners navigate their Irma policy claims.

GlobeSt.com: What pre-hurricane steps did your team take to help expedite the claims process?

Kersting: We spent several days on the front end of Irma communicating with our clients, pushing out proactive risk management tips, encouraging them to review coverages and make sure they had their policies readily available post-storm. This information is provided when our clients bind policies, but it becomes important to “refresh” as a major storm approaches. This year we also developed a variety of digital tools so clients can easily get in touch with us and report claims if they have one.

Sheinberg: What we did before the storm really made a big difference. An emergency claims phone system was set up so clients were getting a call back within minutes of submitting a claim. Franklin Street has also developed a proprietary master policy layered program that can save property owners thousands of dollars both regionally and nationally, while meeting all lender requirements. Hurricane Irma is showing that our insurance coverages are solid, so it gives credence to the program.

GlobeSt.com: What type of insurance claims are you getting most frequently?

Sheinberg: What we’re seeing most are trees down and roof damage from fallen trees or water leakage. But we still have many clients in South Florida who haven’t been able to get to their properties to inspect the damage.

Kersting: Much of the damage that has been reported to us has been to our multifamily properties.  Often multifamily assets are wood-framed buildings that are generally not as protected as office buildings.

The majority of our claims are coming from the east side of the state. We still expect more claims to come in, at this point some owners haven’t been able to visit their properties yet.

This is especially the case with out-of-town owners who may have difficulty getting access for a few more days. In other cases, it’s common for owners to be aware of damage but they haven’t decided yet if they want to report a claim or go about funding repairs themselves.

GlobeSt.com: What are some important lessons learned from Hurricane Irma?

Kersting: From an insurance stand point, there haven’t been major insurance claims incidents in Florida for over 10 years. An event like Hurricane Irma makes policy holders reevaluate their insurance coverage and take a hard look at their deductible levels.

These are conversations that need to be had, we don’t want our clients to be surprised in a time that they turn to their insurance carrier for help.  We continuously push to educate our clients about their coverage options and show them how their insurance policy will be a valuable tool to protect their balance sheet, not simply an expense burden that appeases a lender.

(There are legal issues involved in filing insurance claims of which you may not be aware. Find out what you must know now to avoid felonies.)

 

Source: GlobeSt.

Developers of two major projects submitted proposals to a city of Miami board, including plans for a hotel in the Arts & Entertainment District and for a mixed-use tower in downtown Miami.

Rendering of the Sterling and the hotel at 511 Northeast 15th Street (Credit: Shulman + Associates, Behar Font & Partners)

Behar Font & Partners submitted plans for the Sterling, a proposed 73-story tower at 555 North Miami Avenue called the Sterling. Property records show Dania Beach-based Miami 6th Street LLC, an affiliate of the Turkish Okan Group, owns the 36,000-square-foot development site.

Plans call for 362 residential units, a 300-unit key hotel, 55,400 square feet of office space, and retail space.

The Istanbul developer paid $18.1 million for the parking lot near the historic Central Baptist Church in March. At the time, a broker involved in the sale said the site was zoned for a 1,000-foot building with as much as 1.3 million square feet of space for retail stores, offices, hotel rooms and condos.

One Miami Biscayne Bay and Arts District Hotel, a company controlled by Vinay Rama, submitted plans for 42-story, 270-key hotel on the corner lot at 511 Northeast 15th Street in Miami’s A&E District.

Rama heads Miami-based Mandala Holdings, a hospitality investment platform. His firm paid $8 million for the development site north of downtown Miami. The plans, designed by Shulman + Associates, include meeting space, a lobby with retail space, office space for the hotel management, a pool deck and fitness center. The proposal also calls the project Marriott Miami.

Both developments will go before the Miami Urban Development Review Board.

 

Source: The Real Deal

Turnberry Associates and LeFrak are making moves at SoLēMia.

The developers’ SM Multifamily LLC just closed on a $101 million construction and permanent loan from Wells Fargo, according to a press release. The Housing and Urban Development-insured financing will be used for the development of two 17-story, luxury rental towers totaling 400 units.

The apartment buildings are part of the first phase of SoLēMia, $4 billion mixed-use, master-planned community in North Miami. The developers broke ground on both buildings in July and plan to complete them by the summer of 2019, a spokesperson told The Real Deal. Crews will pour the first elevated deck for the east building in November.

Turnberry, led by Jeffrey and Jackie Soffer, and LeFrak announced plans for the 183-acre development site at 15045 Biscayne Boulevard about two years ago and refinanced the North Miami land in October with a $66.5 million loan. The developers have said they’re footing the bill for the majority of the project’s $150 million worth of infrastructure, including roads and sewers, which is nearly completed.

The apartment towers will feature views of Oleta State Park and the bay, amenities that include a swimming pool and roof deck/sky lounge, a fitness center, community rooms and a business center, according to the release. In all, SoLēMia will have a 10-acre lagoon with beaches, 12 residential buildings with 4,300 units; a town center with shops, restaurant, a hotel and entertainment tenants; and a Warren Henry car dealership.

The former Biscayne Landing site has had a long and troubled history, including Superfund designation in the early 1980s and multiple failed bids for commercial development since 2003. Richard LeFrak bought out former partners Michael Swerdlow and Ezra Katz in 2015. 

Investors and developers in North Miami and nearby North Miami Beach have been picking up properties in the area, including CK Prive Group and Prestige Imports owner Brett David.

 

Source: The Real Deal

Just days after Hurricane Irma lashed downtown Miami and the neighboring Brickell financial district with vicious winds and surging water that took out two construction cranes and flooded major streets, industry players told The Real Deal that the deadly storm largely spared the city’s urban core and coastal communities from catastrophic damage.

Suzanne Amaducci, who leads the real estate group at commercial law firm Bilzin Sumberg, said 1450 Brickell Avenue, the office building where her firm is headquartered, reopened Tuesday morning,

“The power is on and we have air conditioning,” Amaducci said. “If you look at new construction, it withstood the storm very well.”

Carlos Melo, co-founder and principal of the Melo Group — which has developed 12 condo and apartment towers in Miami’s Edgewater, Little Havana and Allapattah neighborhoods — said he weathered Irma at his corporate office, which is on the second floor of his company’s rental building at 425 Northeast 22nd Street.

“We had about one foot of water at ground level,” Melo said. “It only affected the parking area, but it never reached the building. And about an hour-and-a-half after the hurricane passed, the water had receded.”

Melo said none of his buildings sustained extensive damage and that the only major problem is a lack of electricity.

“Nine of our rental buildings are without power and using generators,” Melo said. “The biggest problem is that there are too many downed trees and power lines to pick up.”

The Melo Group currently has two new projects under construction. Aria on the Bay, a 53-story, 648-unit luxury condo tower at 1770 North Bayshore Drive, topped off in May and is scheduled for completion later this year. The firm is also building Square Station, twin 34-story towers at 1424 Northeast Miami Place.

“Both sites are intact and did not sustain damage,” Melo said. “Aria is all glass windows. And none were damaged. The building is intact. The same goes for our neighbors. Square Station, where three construction cranes are currently in operation, was also unscathed. After inspecting the Aria construction site yesterday, we are fully operational again. But work has not begun again at Square Station because we don’t have power there.”

But a pair of projects will have to contend with damage caused by falling cranes. Irma took out the boom from a crane tower at Property Markets Group’s 300 Biscayne Avenue development in downtown Miami and another crane collapsed at the Related Group’s GranParaiso condo tower at 480 Northeast 31st Street.

Ryan Shear, a principal of New York-based PMG, declined comment. Carlos Rosso, president of Related’s condo division, said he couldn’t comment because he was not in Miami to assess the situation at GranParaiso.

A third crane in South Florida also fell at Related’s Auberge Beach Residences and Spa in Fort Lauderdale.  A spokesperson for the project said the crane is “fully contained within the job site,” adding that there was no damage to the tower structure and that power has been restored. The developer and contractor, Moss Construction, are working on a plan to remove the damaged jib, the representative said.

On Wednesday, Moody’s Analytics released a report estimating between $64 billion and $92 billion in property damage and immediate economic lost output caused by Irma, though specific assessments for much of South Florida have not yet emerged. The Florida Keys were battered, with the federal government estimating 90 percent of buildings sustaining damage, but the storm mostly drifted west of Miami.

Chad Warhaft, director of construction and operations for brokerage CREC, said the company’s portfolio of 13 million square feet of commercial space across Florida held up well during Irma.

“Mainly, we are dealing with landscape damage and minor roof leaks,” Warhaft said. “There was a little bit of facade damage at two properties. Other than that, we have been in really good shape.”

Residential developers who spoke to TRD said their projects in Miami were relatively unscathed, and don’t believe the aftermath will have a profound negative impact on their bottom line or construction schedules.

“The 10-story, 81-unit apartment tower at 1657 North Miami Avenue had some stucco fly off and some water intrusion but nothing too severe,” said Nir Shoshani, co-founder and principal of NR Investments, which is developing the Filling Station Lofts in Miami’s Arts & Entertainment District.

His company is also developing Canvas, a 513-unit condo building at 1630 Northeast First Avenue, that has two cranes on site hovering at 425 feet in the air.

“When we started preparing for Irma, we were supposed to be right smack in the middle of its path,” Shoshani said. “There is nothing you can really do to secure those things. On the contrary, you have to let them spin.”

He said crews assessed the site on Monday and he hopes construction on the tower, which has a projected $221 million sellout, will renew before the end of the week. Shoshani said he doesn’t think Irma will cause a major downturn in Miami’s real estate market.

“Miami remains a very attractive place,” Shoshani said. “I also think people forget quickly and it won’t have long term effects on real estate here.”

 

Source: The Real Deal

An 11.4 square mile area of Coral Gables that includes the Shops at Merrick Park, the University of Miami and the city’s upscale Riviera neighborhood is poised for a new wave of development that will completely alter the southern landscape of the City Beautiful.

The neighborhood has long been defined by extravagant single-family homes, one-story shopping plazas, mid-rise office buildings and industrial warehouses. But in recent years, the city’s planning and zoning department and the city commission have relaxed zoning requirements that will allow builders to add a slew of condo towers, hotels, office buildings and retail centers to the neighborhood.

Astor Companies President Henry Torres is among the developers expecting to cash in. His company recently broke ground on Merrick Manor, a 10-story Mediterranean-style building at 301 Altara Avenue. The 227-unit tower is the first major condo development in Coral Gables since the last cycle.

Torres said the neighborhood around Merrick Park is a perfect draw for University of Miami professors and employees, parents who want their children attending the college to live in a nice and safe apartment and empty nesters looking to downsize from their palatial homes in Coral Gables.

“There is a need for what we are offering,” Torres said. “That is what prompted me to build in this part of Coral Gables.”

Signs of Change

Despite vehement opposition from wealthy homeowners in the Riviera section of Coral Gables, the city earlier this year hired architecture and design firm Perkins + Will to develop a master plan for the South Dixie Highway corridor that falls within the city’s boundaries. The master plan will provide developers planning major projects along U.S.1 to incorporate an environment that is welcoming to motorists, transit-users, pedestrians and cyclists.

Transportation

In addition to the Douglas Road and University of Miami Metrorail stations, residents can also catch a ride on one of two free trolleys operated by the city of Coral Gables. Various Miami-Dade County bus routes also service the area. The neighborhood’s main access roads are Ponce de Leon Boulevard, Bird Road and South Dixie Highway.

Commercial Broker’s Take

“The whole retail and dining experience in Merrick Park is wonderfully successful, leading to a new wave of residential development in that area of Coral Gables,” Allen Morris, founder, chairman and CEO of the Allen Morris Companies.

Demographics

Population: 14,995
Median Age: 23
Median Income: $111,838

Priciest Residential Sale

A two-story, 5,029-square-foot contemporary estate with five bedrooms and five bathrooms at 1415 Robbia Avenue sold for $2.3 million in June.

Most Expensive On The Market

$2.7 million for a two-story, 5,129-square-foot mansion with six bedrooms and six bathrooms at 1200 Blue Road with its backyard facing Riviera Golf Course.

Least Expensive On The Market

$470,000 for a 970-square-foot condo with two bedrooms and two bathrooms at the Villages of Merrick Park, 4100 Salzedo Street.

Price Trends

Median Sales Price Per Square Foot:
$355 or 19 percent higher than the rest of Miami-Dade County

Average Rent Over The Last Year:
1.5 percent decrease to $1,905 a month for a one-bedroom apartment

New Development

Clockwise from top left: renderings of Gables Station, Link at Douglas, Merrick Manor, Paseo de la Riviera

South Dixie Highway has become the focus of several major mixed-use projects that will add close to 2,000 residential units and more than 250,000 square feet of commercial space over the next two to three years in South Coral Gables.

NP International plans to convert the former Holiday Inn site at 1350 South Dixie Highway into Paseo de la Riviera, a $172 million development consisting of a 10-story hotel with 252 rooms, an eight-story residential tower with 224 apartments, 20,000 square feet of commercial space and 838 parking spaces. Located across the street from Metrorail and the proposed Underline linear park, Paseo de la Riviera will also have a pedestrian bridge crossing South Dixie Highway and a half-acre green space incorporating public art installations, restaurants, and retail. It will also connect the project’s buildings with nearby Jaycee Park.

Just a few blocks north, near the Shops of Merrick Park, NP has plans for another massive project on a 4.3 acre site called Gables Station. The developer is proposing three towers with a maximum height of 155 feet with about 168 hotel units, 554 luxury condominium residences and 87,900 square feet of retail space.

On a 7-acre site adjacent to the Douglas Road Metrorail Station, a partnership between the Adler Group and 13th Floor Investments won a 30-year lease from Miami-Dade County to develop Link at Douglas, with 970 residences, a 150-key hotel, 70,000 square feet of retail space and a public plaza. The deal includes setting aside 12.5 percent of the units for workforce housing, $14 million in improvements to the Metrorail station and $600,000 contribution to the Underline.

Across the street from the Shops of Merrick Park, BF Group is planning a 10-story mixed-use office building at 4311 Ponce de Leon Boulevard. The developers paid $ 7 million for the site and plan to spend another $40 million building the tower, which will have 30,000 square feet of ground floor retail space and 50,000 square feet of office space.

Meanwhile, Roger Development Group recently broke ground on Laguna House, a condominium tower at the Shops of Merrick Park. The 10-story boutique project at 4220 Laguna Street features only 12 condo units that range from 3,000 square feet to 6,250 square feet.

 

Source: The Real Deal

Wake up and smell the dirty money.

That’s the message federal regulators are sending to the real estate industry in Miami and other high-priced housing markets,

The U.S. Treasury Department announced it would extend and expand a temporary initiative designed to uncover criminals laundering money through real estate. The decree targets secretive shell companies — corporations that don’t have to reveal their true owners — buying luxury homes. The feds have already renewed the rules twice since announcing them in January 2016,

But this time, there’s a big difference — and it’s putting Miami’s struggling condo market under even more scrutiny.

The rules, previously so limited in scope that they applied only to a few hundred deals, will now cover every big-ticket cash transaction by shell companies in seven major markets. They are the South Florida counties of Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach; all five boroughs of New York City; San Antonio, Texas; Honolulu (included in the order for the first time); and Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco.

“This is going to gather much more information,” said Andrew Ittleman, a South Florida attorney who specializes in anti-money-laundering laws.

There’s been speculation about whether the administration of President Donald Trump, a former real estate developer, would double down on an initiative pushed by Obama-era officials. But the new policy shows Trump’s Treasury digging even deeper into the murky world of luxury real estate.

The end result: It’s going to get a lot harder for everyone from drug dealers to Latin American politicians to foreign royalty to shield purchases of U.S. condos and mansions from law enforcement.

The federal decree comes at a bad time for Miami real estate. Overbuilding and a slump in foreign buyers are hurting sales. The average sales price for luxury condo units in Miami Beach fell 21 percent year-over-year in the second quarter of 2017, according to a report from brokerage Douglas Elliman. Two-thirds of those sales were cash.

The rules kick in at different price points depending on the market. In South Florida, they apply to shell companies buying homes for $1 million or more with cash.

“This will help a market that has long neglected the amount of criminal activity taking place in the condo sector,” said Jack McCabe, a South Florida real estate analyst.

But Peter Zalewski, founder of the real estate advisory company Cranespotters, thinks the government is moving too slowly — and not going far enough.

“If you’re closing a $10 million sale and you stand to make $1 million on the deal, that’s a pretty big carrot,” Zalewski said. “And there’s no fear of a government stick, because there isn’t one in place.”

Bark Or Bite?

Critics dismissed Treasury’s original anti-money laundering rules — first deployed in Miami-Dade and Manhattan last year — as so narrow that they were practically toothless.

That’s because only less common methods of cash payments such as money orders, personal checks and hard currency had to be reported. But the latest order includes wire transfers, which are electronic exchanges of money between banks. In most home sales that don’t involve bank loans, money is sent from buyers to sellers through wire transfers. Regulators were missing out on a huge swath of transactions.

“It exempted most people from disclosure,” said Alan Lips, a partner at Miami accounting firm Gerson Preston. “In today’s world, people wire money.”

Until an act of Congress earlier this summer, the Treasury agency behind the initiative, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), did not have the authority to monitor wire transfers.

John Tobon, who leads a team of Department of Homeland Security investigators in South Florida, said the move is a crucial first step in allowing law enforcement to monitor funds moving electronically. After the first order, his agents observed home buyers immediately come up with “countermeasures” to avoid the disclosure requirements, including the use of wire transfers, Tobon said.

“Wire transfers were wide open” for abuse by criminals, “and no one was looking at them,” Toban said. “Now, we’re going to be able to identify companies and individuals that we had no idea about in the past.”

FinCEN is targeting cash home deals because it says they are most susceptible to money laundering. Cash transactions generally don’t involve heavy bank vetting. When banks give out mortgages, they are required to background their customers; professionals in the real estate industry are exempt from those responsibilities, although that could be changing.

Naughty Or Nice

As part of FinCEN’s latest push, the agency has told real estate industry professionals they should be on the lookout for suspicious activity from their clients.

“The misuse of shell companies to launder money is a systemic concern for law enforcement and regulatory agencies,” the agency wrote in an advisory to real estate agents, brokers, lawyers and other industry players.

It also encouraged them to report suspicious activity involving clients. Warning signs of bad behavior include clients willing to blindly overpay or lose money on a deal; the purchase of properties with “no regard” for their condition or location; funding that far exceeds a client’s known wealth; and clients asking for unwarranted secrecy or for records to be altered.

David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor in South Florida who now practices white collar criminal defense, called the advisory “heavy-handed.”

“FinCEN is asking people who are not financial institutions and have no outright obligations to become an arm of the government, to become informants for them,” Weinsten said, “They’re sending a not-so-subtle message: We want you to tell us what’s going on. The implication is that if you don’t do this, we’re going to come after you and start squeezing you and say in our eyes you should have known what was going on. You should have vetted this money.”

Although real estate professionals aren’t required to set up compliance programs, no one is allowed to “willfully” turn a blind eye to money laundering, according to federal law. Weinstein recommended that realty firms consider implementing basic compliance programs.

Ron Shuffield, CEO of EWM Realty International, says the new requirement means closing agents must confirm the name and address of beneficial owners with a 25 percent stake in a corporation or limited liability company via a legal form of ID, such as a passport or driver’s license.

“There’s no legitimate buyer who’s going to feel uncomfortable with this,” Shuffield said.

The degree to which suspect money fuels Miami’s luxe real estate market is debated. But real estate crops up in case after case involving illicit funds. The release of the massive trove of offshore files known as the Panama Papers showed how easily offshore money moves into Miami real estate. The flood of cash has helped raise home prices far beyond what most locals can afford.

In FinCEN’s advisory, the agency highlighted several cases showing the threat posed by money laundering. One example cited was Venezuela’s vice president, Tareck El Aissami, and his associate, Samark López Bello. Both were sanctioned by U.S. authorities for their alleged involvement in narco-trafficking. López Bello owns three Brickell condos valued at nearly $7 million.

Tobon, of Homeland Security, said roughly 50 percent of his investigations involve money laundering through real estate.

The new order takes effect on Sept. 22 and expires on March 20, 2018. It could eventually be made permanent and expanded nationwide. The Washington, D.C., bureau of the Herald’s parent company, McClatchy, broke the news that the order would be extended Tuesday.

Achilles’ Heel

The FinCEN initiative — called a geographic targeting order — was designed to target the Achilles’ heel of American anti-money-laundering laws: weak transparency rules for limited liability corporations.

In many states, including Florida, it’s possible to set up an anonymous company and use it to buy a pricey mansion or condo. Offshore companies can be used for the same purpose. That’s catnip to criminals who don’t want anyone asking where they got the cash.

FinCEN changed the game by requiring title insurers — which are involved in almost all real estate transactions — to pierce the veil of shell companies and determine who really owns them. The information is not made public.

Because of the limitations of the original rules, roughly 240 transactions in the target markets were reported to regulators over 12 months, according to FinCEN data. But 30 percent of those sales were linked to people who’d been separately reported for suspicious activity by financial institutions.

In Miami-Dade, 16 of 32 reported deals were linked to suspicious buyers.

“They’re going to capture a lot more activity now,” said Jason Chorlins, a risk advisor at Miami accounting firm Kaufman Rossin. “The majority of this activity is done via wire transfer.”

 

Source: Bradenton Herald

Location, location, location.

The old adage about what matters most when purchasing property certainly holds true in balmy Miami, where condos offering water views often sell for twice as much as similar ones with city views. A recent report conducted by real estate expert Ross Milroy, who has worked with luxury condo buyers in Miami for nearly two decades, found that local buyers must generally pay a 38 to 101 percent premium for a view of the ocean out their front window.

“Property owners in South Florida are looking to immerse themselves in everything Miami has to offer,” Milroy says. “Buyers want to see the ocean, hear the water, feel the ocean breeze, and have a seamless experience of bringing the outdoors in and the indoors out.”

Understandably, one of the best ways to do that is by buying a high-end condo that takes advantage of Miami’s oceanfront vistas and laid-back beach vibe.

According to Milroy, prices vary the most in South Beach, where waterfront condos sell for $1,950 per square foot and inland condos sell for $970 per square foot—a difference of 101 percent. At Jade at Brickell, residences with city panoramas are listed for $900,000, while buyers must fork over $1.8 million for waterfront units—that’s another 100 percent premium.

 

Though less pronounced elsewhere, water views still cost a pretty penny in other parts of the city. At Ten Museum Park, condos with city views are listed for $759,000 while units with water views are priced at $1.1 million—a 49 percent difference.

So where should buyers look if they want to live by the water? Residential towers near Biscayne Bay and the Miami River offer optimal views.

 

Source: Robb Report

Wages, salaries, and total compensation are rising faster in Miami than any other major city.

In the 12 month period ending June 2017, wages and salaries in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL MSA increased 3.9%, while total compensation was up 3.7%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Seattle ranked second in wages and salaries gains at 3.6%, while New York placed second for total compensation increase at 3.3%. Washington D.C. and Philadelphia ranked lowest.

Wage gains are also accelerating. In 2015-2016, the increase in Miami was 2.5% for total compensation and 2.9% for wages and salaries.

Miami Today first reported the data.

 

Source: The Next Miami